Monday, December 31, 2012

Party!

Friday, December 28, 2012

Untold VI

Episode six of Oliver Stone's unfolding masterpiece: Kennedy, with (and without) tears.

I - V.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Untold V

When Dwight "Military-Industrial Complex Warner (and Facilitator)" Eisenhower took office, the US had

983 nukes

at hand.

When he left office 8 years later, the US had over

32,000 nukes

available, poised to be used in Eisenhower's Strategic Air Command Emergency War Plan, a plan which would drop 800 bombs over 120 Soviet cities, with an estimated 140 million dead.

Also during these eight dreadful years, Ike and the Dulles Bund would overthrow, or attempt to overthrow, the democractically elected governments of Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Laos, Costa Rica, Syria, Cuba, Vietnam, Egypt, the Congo, Algeria.

In one of the most explosive documentary hours of our time, Part Five of "Untold History," Oliver Stone exposes this fascist waterboy for worldwide capital.

Parts I - IV.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Untold IV

One war done, the next one begins, as the US and British national security states seek to crush Leftist governments and movements worldwide, and at home. Stone's "Untold History," Part Four.

The earlier episodes.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Blood of the Lamb

Wiping out twenty children during Christmas season. . .

Wiping out twenty children during Christmas season.

When did the sowing begin? With Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Southeast Asia? Desert Storm and the follow-up Sanctions of Genocide? The destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan? On and on and on.

Such as this just weeks ago.

Mark Ames and Arthur Silber on the latest of this thoroughly American act of madness.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Untold III

Wherein a grocery clerk by the name of Harry Truman mass-murders hundreds of thousands of Japanese innocents while turning the US into a permanent gangster state. Part Three of Stone's "Untold History."

Parts I and II.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Untold II

From giants FDR and Henry Wallace to pygmy Harry S. Truman, in Part Two of Oliver Stone's magisterial "Untold History."

Part I.

Friday, December 7, 2012

Comfort and Joy



Happy 8th Birthday to the best daughter in the world! 

Thank you for every day.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Aurélie


Dupont. Oh my.

An interview, and a study. (Both in French, but so what?)



And Aurélie Dupont in George Balanchine's Rubies.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Untold

Oliver Stone's "Untold History (formerly called Secret History) of the United States" premiered this week on cable television, leading off with what World War II was really about (the Soviets won it); and celebrating the great (and forgotten) Henry Wallace. Terrific start. Stone narrates.



The rest of the ten-part series can be followed at Showtime. (Or here.)

This morning, the director was with Amy Goodman.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Come On Along


It's the 100th Anniversary of Irving Berlin's first big hit! Here's a coupla neat versions. :-)

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Dead Enough?

Ignore the empty hustler Obama? -- oh, yeah. Ignore Chris Floyd? Never.

Floyd with the best post-reelection essay so far.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Tree Trunks


The most adorable of all creatures in Adventure Time's adorable (and subversive) post-apocalypse world is a sweet little elephant with a Southern drawl called Tree Trunks. She scampers through many episodes, baking delicious apple pies for her friends in the Candy Kingdom. She is featured twice, where she searches -- with the help of Finn & Jake -- for the ultimate pie filling: the Crystal Gem Apple. Shockingly, at the end of part one, when she bites into the found apple, Tree Trunk explodes. In the second part, called Crystals Have Power, all things come together.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Goodbye to All That

The most sickening part of last night -- aside from finding out that Spielberg's latest piece of bathos is a movie about, get this, Abraham Lincoln -- was having to wade 6 or 7 hours through the mediots cesspool. God, what a stench. And how pro-Obie they were: calling states for Obama where Romney was still ahead (Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin) in a bum's rush to Total Victory.

The basis of their bias was clear: He is They: Nowhere People with little humanity and ground zero talent beyond psychopathic ambition and the "gift" of sniffing out the right career op at the right moment.

And the babble about the coming Grand Bargain, in which Offal will complete the project of reversing everything the Democrats accomplished in the 20th Century. And his heroic achievement of Uniting the Democratic Party by selling out on everything it had once stood for.

Out.

And now, Mr. Floyd:
Well, you got your lesser evil. Now all we can do is hope that he will do less evil than he did in his first term. Bitter experience, and a nodding acquaintance with history -- and human nature -- mitigate mightily against such a hope, but we are where we are, and that's all we've got.

In any case, I am eagerly looking forward to seeing how all our super-savvy lesser-evilist progressives "hold Obama's feet to the fire" in the months to come, as they promised so solemnly to do. You remember, don' t you? How they savagely condemned anyone who so much as thought about not supporting Obama, while pledging to unleash their righteous rage at his crimes and follies -- just as soon as he was safely returned to the White House. I'm sure they'll come down hard on him. Why, I can see it all now.....
"OK, now the inauguration's over, let's get to work. First of all, these drone attacks are criminal atrocities killing scores of innocent people. We can organize a protest march to--"

Super-savvy prog: "
Hush your mouth!  We can't undermine the president right now. We've got to help the Democrats get control of the House in 2014! Or do you want the evil Rethuglicans to keep blocking everything? Wait until after the mid-term elections, then we'll put the pressure on."


***
"OK, we took back the House in 2014 with a slate of anti-abortion, pro-war, entitlement-slashing, deficit-hawk, Blue Dog Democrats. You said it was the savvy thing to do, the lesser evil to replace the anti-abortion, pro-war, entitlement-slashing, deficit-hawk Republicans. NOW can we go after Obama -- for the state terrorism of the drone campaign, the 'extrajudicial' murders, the 'disposition matrix,' the torture and imprisonment of the truth-teller Bradley Manning, the support of the brutal coup and murderous repression in Honduras, the fracking, the off-shore drilling, the 'Grand Bargaining' with Social Security and Medicare, the protection of CIA torturers, the global arms dealing, the growing prison population, the growing economic inequality, the ever-more draconian 'security apparatus', the bail-out of the oligarchs and the--"

Super- savvy prog: "Bite your tongue! We can't undermine the president right now! It will hurt the chances of his Democratic successor if we make Obama look bad! Or do you want Paul Ryan to be president? What kind of selfish moral purist are you?"
Oh yeah, they're really gonna make Obama sweat. Things will be different this time around. I can't wait!

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Go

Saturday, November 3, 2012

End Game

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Gentleman


Let us pray for the wonderful American who passed last week.

A most fitting (and timely) tribute to the Senator is his recent letter sent to the treacherous worm who's sold out on everything George stood for, written for Harper's magazine.

And the convention acceptance speech he made 40 years ago, at 2 o'clock in the morning. Senator McGovern was then immediately sandbagged by Tom "Drunken Loon" Eagleton, the labor and Democratic Party establishment, Dick Nixon's junkies, and the basic depravity of the American people.

Way too good for 1972, even though '72 seems like paradise compared to Obama's corporate murder state. Come home, America. Wherever you are.

Reasons to be Cheerless, Part 3

Defecator of the skank series known as "Girrrrllllzzzzzzzzzzz" has told us why we should all vote for Obie. Come to think of it, he is the Lena Dunham of Presidents, ain't he? Thoroughly corrupt, psychopathically self-regarding, empty as a used Kotex box, and someone who makes the mediocre and narcissistic feel just plain great.

Please, get a barf bag before clicking.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Sweep!!

Unbelievable. They had to win three straight elimnation games, all on the road, against Cincinnati. Then three straight elimination games against the defending champion Cardinals. They did. Then swept the Detroit Tigers in the World Series, 4-0.

Unbelievable.



Sunday, October 21, 2012

Be


Kennedy/Khrushchev/Castro during the Missile Crisis.

A trilogy of neat cartoons from the good folks at Armageddon Letters.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

The Real 1962

Was forced to sit through 90 minutes of Mad Men last weekend.

Antidote.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Space Car

October 7th, 1962.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

The Sniper

Premiering October '62, the best war series of all-time.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Falling

"The Night the Roof Fell In" -- October 9, 1962

Sunday, October 14, 2012

G-Men, Past & Present


Indeed. 50 years ago this week. . .



Boo. . . .

But how 'bout this week's comeback against those Reds! Down 0 - 2 heading back to Cincy, they sweep the remaining three games and now take on the defending champion Cards in the NLCS. Just goes to show that having the best catcher in the ballclub's history, and a great rotation, and a decent bullpen can make up for having seven Johnny Lemasters in the line-up. Go Giants!



Friday, October 12, 2012

Intermission


Edward Hopper, 1962

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Blast Off!

Monday, October 8, 2012

Where Were You in '62?

Being saved, if alive. More to come. . .

Saturday, October 6, 2012

The Last Cup

And now, the show is gone. Jerry Seinfeld and top comics new and old, straight to the Net, tiny budget for 10-15 minute eps.

Yet, cancelled. If only Jerry had come up with "CIA Agents in Cars Getting Coffee" instead.

Last guest: Michael Richards. An elegy. (Due to Crackle's new autoplay embed stupidity, forced to provide only the link.)

And, since they mention "The Chicken Roaster". . .

Friday, October 5, 2012

The Drone


Kevin Baker and Jack Hitt of Harper's "Political Asylum," our best campaign reporters, with the best take yet on Obama's dive.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE EX-PRESIDENT






The brilliant rest.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Well. . .


"I wear the chain I forged in life. Link by link." -- Marley's Ghost

If you govern and spiel as a corporate totalitarian, having been elected as a liberatory progressive, who's to be surprised when you get whupped on national TV by a true blue corporate totalitarian?

And he was.

Shocked. The most one-sided POTUS debate I've seen, including Kennedy-Nixon and Reagan-Carter.

Poor Iran.

Best of all, Mister Floyd:
I understand there is some kind of event scheduled for this evening that will feature two known and proven liars mouthing pious rhetoric, brazen falsehoods and scripted zingers in a process carefully crafted by their paid handlers to exclude any substantive examination of genuine issues of vital concern to the citizens whom the two known liars purportedly wish to "serve." I understand this will be followed by an outpouring of fetid gas emitted by a series of third-rate intellects and clueless goobers in various media who will examine the body language and facial expressions of the two proven liars to determine which of the liars might have gained the most political benefit from their lying and zinging and pious posing.The end result of this process will be that one of the two known and proven liars will become the temporary manager of a world-spanning, treasury-bleeding war machine which they will use to kill many innocent people over the next four years while continuing to degrade the lives and liberties of their own citizens on behalf of a brutal, stupid and rapacious elite.

This, we are told, is a very serious event to which very serious people should pay very serious attention. Fortunately, I am an entirely frivolous person, so I will be free to ignore this very serious business. Instead I think I might go out back and throw a few sticks on the fire.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Repost: BB Gun


From last May:

Recently, someone named BeeBee decided to publicly proclaim that the country of Iran -- a country which has not invaded a neighboring land since the 16th Century -- was the "Greatest Threat in the World to Civilization."

I found BeeBee's remark sort of strange. Isn't Iran's perhaps the most beautiful, and liveliest, culture on the planet?

This BeeBee seems to have something to do with the government of Israel. As I wrote awhile back:
It's damn sad the society which has produced many of our greatest filmmakers, poets, painters, classical composers, bloggers, sculptors, short-story writers and novelists is being seen through the prism of whether or not it poses a threat to the two dumbest and sickest cultures on the planet: America's; and the wee welfare state of Israel. One needn't bother to search for signs of poets, novelists (Dan Brown doesn't count; neither does Jonathan Franzen), sculptors, or serious musicians' impact on recent US pop culture. How ridiculous. But where is the Israeli Rahmani or Varand, Panahi or Kiarostami, Ziapour or Maryam Hashemi? No, all Israel (pushed hard by Uncle Sam) seems willing to produce and celebrate are assassins.

Not only has the soul of American pop culture been destoyed by the incubus of Corporatism, Corporatism also attempts to take over how we view other cultures as well. So this rich, humane, complicated, contradictory, intensely political and oh-so-feminine culture of Iran can only be judged by the standards of a filthy back alley; or a C-block in prison. For the stupid liars of the American media, Iran is all Ahmadinejad/Ayatollah/Atomic all the time. What's never mentioned is Iran's active, fertile political culture -- the most hopeful in the world. A real street politics, close to USA 1968. [Instead of a "political culture" of cowards typing into blogs and keyboards. Such as myself. 'Though I would run off to a Sierra Maestra if there were one.] Also never mentioned -- in the idiot view that Iran must be soooo politically incorrect because their women don't act like "Sex and the City" skanks -- is an intensely courageous and beautiful feminist movement: a view of feminism rejecting the definition of achievement and advance along CEO lines; instead, belief in a more basic feminization of society: something more communal and emotional, less materialistic, domineeering and ego-based, less belief in change-for-change's-sake.

And that -- along with the more traditional motives of grand strategy, racism and material theft -- may be the center of American and Zionist hysteria over a culture which hasn't invaded another land since before Plymouth Rock: Iran is the one of the last cultures remaining in the world not under the boot of post-modern, post-human Corporatism. (Compare the street demonstrations and deaths in the wake of Ahmadinejad's theft of last June's election to the "get over it already" response when Bush/Cheney did the same thing here in 2000.) The mass hatred expressed toward Iran in the Western media cannot be based on anyone actually believing Iran is some sort of military threat, some destablizing force in the world, no chance. It's the hatred of the cowardly toward the brave, the plastic toward the human, the barren toward the fertile. Two cultures of death seeking the extinction of a culture filled with messy life. Simple, yes. But it makes a lot more sense than Iran being a threat to anyone, except by the threat posed by the example of a real culture in a what is becoming every day a cultureless world.
Two years on, we're still waiting for the Israeli equivalent of the Iranian artists mentioned.

Crickets . . . .

Crickets . . . .

Crickets . . . .

Crickets . . . .

This month is Israel's 64th birthday. While we continue to wait for its first great filmmaker, let us enjoy The Threat:

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

'Nother Cup a Jerry


The smoothest so far: Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Domination & Delusion


The great Chris Floyd on the worldwide Muslim uprising.
Sparked by a deliberate provocation put together by Christian extremists, riots by groups of Islamic extremists are spreading across the world -- a convenient symbiosis for both groups, as they use each other's actions to "justify" their hysterically constricted worldviews.

There is an added layer to the reaction in the Muslim countries, as the extremists there can draw on the seething resentments built up by the depredations and atrocities inflicted indiscriminately on Muslims by the Western powers in recent decades, particularly since the launch of Terror War.

But of course these depredations and atrocities are the work of yet another group of sectarian extremists gripped by a hysterically constricted worldview: the Western power elites, who are maniacal adherents to the Dominationist cult. This bizarre but very powerful sect holds that American domination of the world, militarily and economically, is part of the divinely ordained structure of the universe. Those who adhere to Dominationist dogma and obey the dictates of the sect's high priests in Washington are rewarded; but unbelievers, heretics and apostates are to be cast out, cursed, attacked and, when possible, destroyed.

In the last 11 years alone, state-backed Dominationist terrorists have killed far more innocent people than their counterparts among the scattered clumps of Islamic extremists around the world. More than a million people have been killed as a result of the Dominationist terrorist attack on Iraq, for example. Hundreds of innocent people in Pakistan have been murdered by the drones fired by Dominationist terrorists. Dozens are dying monthly in violent Dominationist attacks in Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines and elsewhere.

The senseless violence of the Dominationist sect is well-attested. The sect's leaders brag openly about their use of violence; indeed, in the constant factional jockeying for power within the sect (a characteristic of all religious and ideological cults, of course), would-be leaders vie to paint themselves as the one most willing to inflict massive death and destruction on all those who dare challenge the Dominationist faith. All would-be leaders trumpet their willingness -- their eagerness -- to eschew mere man-made laws as they do "whatever it takes" to defend the faith and advance Dominationist supremacy over the earth. Torture, kidnapping, assassination and mass destruction are all considered divinely justified by the Dominationist extremists -- and by the millions of people who actively support the factions within the sect.

In fact, the Dominationist extremists have far more support in their native lands than the riot-provoking Islamic extremists have in theirs. Muslims overwhelmingly reject violence, even in response to the relentless, murderous provocations of the Dominationists -- as anyone who actually lives among large numbers of Muslims (as I do) knows perfectly well. Nor are the vast majority of Muslims taken by cheap tricks like the video posted by extremist Christians. As Ghaith Abdul-Ahad notes in an excellent analysis in the Guardian, "only a few thousand" Muslims -- out of 1.6 billion -- have taken part in the protests, which, he points out, are being exploited by fundamentalist Salafi sects that have been marginalized by the Arab Spring revolutions and are now trying to claw into positions of power.

We might also note that the Dominationists have made common cause with violent Salafis time and time again over years -- e.g., in Afghanistan during the Soviet period, in Iraq during the "surge," and today in Syria. The symbiosis of violent extremists -- Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Dominationist and others -- is also a well-attested fact of history -- and of human nature. Because at bottom, all of them share one fundamental, overriding principle, the common core of their faith (whatever its outward flourishes might be): the holiness of violence, the enforced assertion and/or imposition of their worldview by the repression or destruction of others.

As I said, it is very rare to find a Muslim who actually holds such a view, or who supports any group that does. But you will find millions and millions of people in the West who believe that the Dominationist extremists are completely justified -- even divinely justified -- in their terrorist actions. In fact, we will soon see more than 100 million Americans go to the polls to vote for one of these state-terrorist factions who openly support torture, war and murder in the name of their primitive faith ... and have history's biggest war machine to back them up.

That's a bit more scary to me than a few thousand marginalized, powerless people taking the bait of foreign provocateurs and local manipulators in a spate of riots. These outbursts are reprehensible, of course -- another deadly ratcheting up in the endless, symbiotic cycle of Terror War violence that will do no one any good (except for the extremist elites, on all sides, who feast on blood and ruin). But set against the massively supported, millions-killing terrorism of the Dominationists, the riots are like a whisper in the howling of a storm.
+ + + + + + +

Meanwhile, back in the Dominion: Occupy is back. Hmmmm. Much like the peculiar timing of last year's unexpected appearance -- suddenly there when the Challenge Obama movement was gathering full steam, then not there after it was too late to challenge The Hustler -- where were the iPad Sandinistas during Obie's convention? After all, he did sell out on everything "anti-1%" he ran on in '08, did he not? And where is Occupy's involvement in the Chicago teachers' strike? No matter. iPhone 5.0 will soon grab back their shallow little attentions.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Where?

Monday, August 27, 2012

Mad!


Born sixty years ago this month.

With a little help from Ramsey Lewis, Halloween 1960, in a worryless state.

Monday, August 20, 2012

God Have Mercy


"The angels are white!"  -- Louis Lambert

Vertigo finally made it, to the top of the every-year-ending-in-2 worldwide critics list, as Best Movie of All Time.

Let us look at the ending.

The madman has found out. He has found out that the girl of his sexless dreams is a cheap, dumb, lowlife, Kansas-born, non-dreamy, non-aristocratic slut. Used-up; and a user. Yet there she is: stripped and naked, giving him her soul and body, her hair color, name, wardrobe, her manner of speaking; yearning, wilfully transformed back into his dream image; beautiful, young, madly in love -- as much his as any woman could be. And the sick dried-up old man can only say to himself: "It's too late, it's too late. . . There's no bringing her back."

And she jumps. Yes, jumps. The nun is the sign of her future -- alone again, loveless, betrayed, rejected, once more cast aside. "Oh, no... No!"

And he? Returned to the land of self-pity and loss -- self-crucifixion -- he doesn't even move to call anyone in hopes of saving her. She isn't worth it. For there's no bringing her back.

God have mercy.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Coming to a Beer Hall Near You


The Nazi wing of the US National Security State twitching its hips over Barack Obama's electoral use of his worldwide mass-murder campaign. This coming from the wing fully empowered by Bush/Cheney -- the Beavis & Butthead of "Terror War" political exploitation.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Not This Time

"God gave Noah the rainbow sign:
 No water -- the fire next time."

1992





2012





++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Men and Not Men



Chris Floyd. And Dan Ellsberg:



And the man himself:

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Slaughter on 7th Avenue

Another Kennedy put down by the US murder state, this one Darius. Black, not white. Agnostic, not Catholic. Poor, not rich. A street performer, not a public servant.

This is what happens to you in what once the greatest and most alive city in the world -- now little more than a Zagats-sucking corporatist prison camp, where office mummies are protected, and where humans are . . . .

THIS:

Friday, August 10, 2012

Joy to the World


In late May, after L.A. was bounced by the OkiDogs, the future looked grim: age, no bench, no perimeter game, salary-capped out, disgruntled players, an increasingly frustrated and domineering superstar, a shaky head coach. What Laker fan could possibly have imagined we would be glorying in the greatest off-season by a General Manager in NBA history? Getting Steve Nash for nothing, keeping Pau Gasol, keeping Metta World Peace, re-signing Jordan Hill, signing Antawn Jamison, adding Jodie Meeks. And now -- Dwight has arrived.

Mitch Kupchak for President! Bill Simmons with a funny, and honorable (considering he's a Celtics Freak), appreciation.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Tops

The British Film Institute has unveiled its every-10-year critics' list of the greatest movies of all time. And its secondary list of directors' choices.

Strangely, I wasn't invited to participate. So here goes, in chronological order:
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne (1945)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Out of the Past (1947)
Late Spring (1949)
Europa '51 (1952)
Ugetsu (1953)
Madame de. . . (1953)
Ordet (1955)
The Wrong Man (1956)
Boy, movies sure peaked a long time ago, didn't they?

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Gore Redux

A very nice PBS Masters from 2003. He will only get bigger with time. . .

Friday, August 3, 2012

Falling


Okay, we know Chris Nolan is just another lump shat out by our corporatist movie culture. Not worthy of our attentions.

Eileen Jones is.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Vidal

A beautiful farewell from Chris Floyd.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Banksters

Iran knows what to do.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Cornered


He challenged the guns of his time, one seething with plots, where the disconnect between citizens' desires and state actions became total -- corporatism, militarism, media infiltration, the destruction of all things Public. And the guns became trained on him.

Julian Assange's story, perhaps the most fetid corpse in Obama's ever-expanding charnel house, is the place where U.S. establishment television won't go. This week, Four Corners -- an Australian Broadcasting Corporation news show -- went there.

Mike Head with the background on a courageous 46 minutes.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Hitch x 3: "I Saw What You Did"

The last and best of the "lost" Hitchcock TV works, recently posted at Karagarga.

A crime fiction writer (John Forsythe) is arrested for felony hit-and-run. During his trial, the victim dies. Five witnesses to the accident all seem to agree on what happened -- until the defendant, curiously acting as his own attorney, begins to question them. Then begins to emerge beneath a fairly standard Defenders-like plot, a surprising and very moving undertone. Claire Griswold is the real standout as a young mother who decides to keep her baby. A masterpiece.

Made shortly before he began The Birds, this is the only episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour directed by Hitch himself. Originally broadcast in October, 1962.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Separate Lives


Next stop -- strip searches at American movie theaters. As if we needed any more reasons to avoid them. . .

Arthur Silber on the Aurora weeping and teeth-gnashing by the Death State.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Hitch x 3: "Incident at a Corner"

A brushfire of false accusations ignites when a grandfatherly school crossing-guard is rumored to be "too fond of the little girls." The man responsible for the rumor spreads it in order to protect his own wife from accusations possibly coming from the school guard, concerning the wife's past. A pre-emptive strike, let us say.

The second of three recently posted rare Hitchcock TV episodes at Karagarga, "Incident at a Corner" (1960) stars the young George Peppard -- in the year of Home from the Hill and a year away from Breakfast at Tiffany's -- and Vera Miles in this small town suburban La Ronde. Produced for the anthology series Startime, it was directed one week after the completion of Psycho by Hitchcock, who must have been exhausted.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

St. George


The convention acceptance speech he made 40 years ago this week, at 2 o'clock in the morning. Senator McGovern was then immediately sandbagged by Tom "Drunken Loon" Eagleton, the labor and Democratic Party establishment, Dick Nixon's junkies, and the basic depravity of the American people.

Way too good for 1972, even though '72 seems like a paradise compared to the corporate totalitarian murder state we now live under. Happy 90th Birthday to a great man.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Scream


And scream again.

Monday, July 16, 2012

The Lesser, By Far


A very important man by the simple name of "Hugh" has been compiling, since October '09, a longer and longer list of what he calls "Obama Scandals" -- defined by Hugh as any instance of corporatist, anti-progessive action (or inaction) by Mr. Jump Shot. Hugh seems to have given up the ghost last November, but leaves behind 304 detailed items -- all of which should be trumpeted loud and clear throughout 2012 (and beyond).


Comandante knows.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Silver Sheen


WFAN-NY was the first all-sports radio station in the history of man. The city's celebrating the station's 25th-anniversary this month, and no better appreciation can be found than the one from Grantland's Alex French and Howie Kahn (with Bill Simmons's hysterical take on Mike and the Mad Dog a special highlight).

Friday, July 6, 2012

Taps

Alexander Cockburn and the end of Occupy.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Squares

Lori Harfenist is that rarest of creatures, a true blue New Yorker. Her work -- collected at The Resident -- comes straight from the heart.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Nora Ephron Was Still Alive??

I know, right. Eileen Jones was also wondering.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Hitch x 3: "Four O'Clock"

Three rare -- in two cases out of circulation -- television works directed by Alfred Hitchcock have been unveiled over at the best movie site on the net, Karagarga. (By invite only, so contact me if interested.) Will be posting all three, for each is top notch.

First up, "Four O'Clock" (1957): A watchmaker (E.G. Marshall) constructs a time-bomb to go off at 4:00pm, intending to kill his wife (Nancy Kelly) and her suspected lover (Richard Long). After planting the bomb in the basement of his house, the watchmaker runs into a couple of juvenile delinquent burglars (one played by the young Harry Dean Stanton), who gag him and tie him to a basement post. Hoping for rescue, he learns the truth about his wife's "lover" -- but loses her anyway.

Made between The Wrong Man and Vertigo (for the NBC omnibus Suspicion), Hitchcock really turns the screws, in a breathless 45 minutes.

Monday, June 11, 2012

The Unspeakable

Chris Floyd and Arthur Silber with two of the most powerful essays of our time.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

The Greatest Basketball Team of All Time


And 25 years ago tonight, its greatest moment.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Death Squad Commander


Who knew we were electing Roberto D'Aubuisson four years ago. St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine? Burn in hell, killer.

In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.
They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”
His first term has seen private warnings from top officials about a “Whac-A-Mole” approach to counterterrorism; the invention of a new category of aerial attack following complaints of careless targeting; and presidential acquiescence in a formula for counting civilian deaths that some officials think is skewed to produce low numbers.
The administration’s failure to forge a clear detention policy has created the impression among some members of Congress of a take-no-prisoners policy. And Mr. Obama’s ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, has complained to colleagues that the C.I.A.’s strikes drive American policy there, saying “he didn’t realize his main job was to kill people,” a colleague said.
Beside the president at every step is his counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, who is variously compared by colleagues to a dogged police detective, tracking terrorists from his cavelike office in the White House basement, or a priest whose blessing has become indispensable to Mr. Obama, echoing the president’s attempt to apply the “just war” theories of Christian philosophers to a brutal modern conflict.
But the strikes that have eviscerated Al Qaeda — just since April, there have been 14 in Yemen, and 6 in Pakistan — have also tested both men’s commitment to the principles they have repeatedly said are necessary to defeat the enemy in the long term. Drones have replaced Guantánamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants; in his 2010 guilty plea, Faisal Shahzad, who had tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square, justified targeting civilians by telling the judge, “When the drones hit, they don’t see children.”
Dennis C. Blair, director of national intelligence until he was fired in May 2010, said that discussions inside the White House of long-term strategy against Al Qaeda were sidelined by the intense focus on strikes. “The steady refrain in the White House was, ‘This is the only game in town’ — reminded me of body counts in Vietnam,” said Mr. Blair, a retired admiral who began his Navy service during that war.
Mr. Blair’s criticism, dismissed by White House officials as personal pique, nonetheless resonates inside the government.
William M. Daley, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff in 2011, said the president and his advisers understood that they could not keep adding new names to a kill list, from ever lower on the Qaeda totem pole. What remains unanswered is how much killing will be enough.

Chris Floyd, speechless.


Tuesday, May 22, 2012

White Negroes


One of the best readers of our political and media culture is Adam Curtis of the BBC. He recently posted a brilliant essay celebrating a 1969 documentary by Dick Fontaine called Mailer for Mayor -- on the great writer's insane run for the office (with Jimmy Breslin as his running mate!): both men calling for the secession of the City from the rest of New York, creating our 51st state. (Let's please lose Staten Island, while we're at it.)

Curtis's piece details Mailer's embrace of hipsterism, and his warnings about its possible underside: the dangers of co-optation in service to corporate capitalism. Done. Long ago, done. Barack Obama being the ultimate White Negro, but for his no doubt being, as are all bullies, a physical coward.

(Thomas Frank's book The Conquest of Cool has the same subject, as does Frank's wonderful journal, once extinct -- now revived, The Baffler.)

Embedded in Curtis's post is the documentary itself. Awesome.